NEW YORK -- Rajat Gupta, a former director of Goldman Sachs , will spend two years in jail and an additional year on supervised release for his role in a sprawling insider-trading scheme on Wall Street.

XU YONGHAI’S flock gathers weekly to worship in his small studio apartment in west-central Beijing. On a chilly winter morning a dozen people climb the concrete stairs to his door, dump their coats on his Snoopy bedsheets and gather around a table laid with tea and Bibles. The service begins with some devotional songs, accompanied by music from a battery-powered speaker. The pocket-sized gadget packs up halfway through the medley, forcing the pastor to dig out a spare.

Many tight-knit services such as this one take place across China each week. The small congregation meets without the permission of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, a government umbrella under which all China’s Protestant congregations are supposed to huddle. It meets on Fridays rather than Sundays, an arrangement considered less likely to provoke officials. Authorities know what goes on and occasionally post a watchman to a security box outside the building. But they tend not to interfere, says Mr Xu, because they know that all his congregation does is “read the Bible”.

Chinese Christians were thought to number about 70m in 2010 and are probably more numerous now. Perhaps only a minority of them worships in government-sanctioned churches, in which the party vets both clergy and services. Most attend unregistered ones, which vary from cramped house groups such as Mr Xu’s to thriving congregations of hundreds—and in a few cases thousands—of believers. Some of these churches are aggressively persecuted, their ministers imprisoned. But most persist, watched warily by officials but not exactly clandestine. Gatherings in this “grey zone” are where China’s Christians may worship most freely, says Fenggang Yang, a scholar of religion at Purdue University in Indiana.

God- and state-fearing

Although Christians are growing more numerous, the wriggle room allowed to them is shrinking. Of most recent concern is a revised set of religious regulations that came into force in February. The old rules had stopped short of explicitly outlawing informal religious gatherings, but the new ones state more clearly that unregistered churches are beyond the pale. Fearing a clampdown, some bigger churches have split their congregations into small house groups that they think officials will find less bothersome, says Fan Yafeng, a pastor and legal scholar. Others are appointing chains of substitute ministers and managers to keep things running should the main ones be arrested.

Restrictions on religious practices in China have ebbed and flowed since 1979, when the officially atheist Communist Party began reopening churches, mosques and temples that had been shut down under Mao. When Xi Jinping became the party’s general secretary in 2012, optimists dared to wonder if further loosening was on the cards. Instead Mr Xi’s administration has emboldened an intolerant party faction that was already dominant before his elevation, whom Mr Yang describes as “militant atheists”. At a big conference in 2016 Mr Xi warned that some religious beliefs could be a conduit for “foreign infiltration”. Party bigwigs have taken to insisting that religions in China must be “sinicised” and occasionally wheel out pliant bishops, imams and monks to echo that view.

One result has been a series of harsh crackdowns on the religious, especially in a handful of provinces where informal worship is most common. Top of the party’s concerns are creeds it does not consider indigenous to China and which it blames for fuelling secessionism among ethnic minorities. Uighur Muslims in the western province of Xinjiang are suffering especially egregious security measures—ostensibly aimed at fighting terrorism—that include high-tech surveillance and sweeping detentions of men deemed dangerously spiritual (pettier restrictions have included a ban on religious-sounding names and the wearing of “abnormal” beards). Increasingly, intolerance is also affecting better-integrated Muslims, such as the Hui. Last summer Global Times, a state-owned newspaper, reported that officials in Qinghai province had stripped loudspeakers from more than 350 mosques, apparently to tackle “noise pollution” caused by the call to prayer.

Christians are also under suspicion, though for slightly different reasons. They are many times more numerous than Muslims and are predominantly drawn from the Han, China’s majority ethnicity. The party worries that Protestantism is spreading quickly among young, educated urbanites whose talents it needs to help modernise the country, says Ian Johnson, author of a recent book about religion in China. A few years ago authorities tore down vast numbers of crosses from both registered and unregistered churches in Zhejiang, a relatively devout eastern province. At least one big church has lately been dynamited, ostensibly for lacking the proper planning permission. Last year officials undertaking poverty relief in Jiangxi were reported to be urging locals to replace pictures of Jesus in their homes with portraits of Mr Xi.

Some of the new regulations look designed to account for changes to society since 2005, when the previous version was promulgated. They tighten control over religious content online, for example, and seek to make it more difficult for China’s increasingly wealthy believers to go to religious conferences or workshops abroad. But they also impose stiff fines on people who organise unregistered religious gatherings, and on landlords who allow their properties to be used for them.

How much difference this will make in practice remains a matter of much debate. The likelihood is that enforcement will vary greatly by province, and that the largest unregistered congregations are the ones most at risk. Wang Yi, the outspoken pastor of a big Protestant church in the south-western city of Chengdu, says that in recent months police have been dropping in more often than usual, and that about 20 congregants have been invited to “have tea” with the authorities (a polite form of intimidation). Ezra Jin of Zion Church, a middle-class congregation of about 1,600 in Beijing, says that officials have become fussier about old but rarely enforced rules prohibiting under-18s from receiving religious instruction.

Not everyone stands to lose out. Carsten Vala at Loyola University in America says the new rules clarify that some registered religious groups are allowed to do social work, such as running nursing homes. And nothing in the revised regulations limits or extends the vast extralegal powers that officials have always been able to wield by invoking national security. Yet as Mr Xi consolidates his power over the party, and the party’s power over government, nervousness is growing. No one is as sure as they used to be about the direction China’s religious life will take.

MIEKO TERADA moved to Tama in 1976, at about the same time as everyone else there. Back then, the fast-growing city in Tokyo’s suburban fringe was busy with young married couples and children. These days, however, the strip of shops where Ms Terada runs a café is deathly quiet, her clientele elderly. The people of Tama and their apartments are all growing old and decrepit at the same time, she says.

In the mid-1990s Japan had a smaller proportion of over-65s than Britain or Germany. Thanks to an ultra-low birth rate, admirable longevity and a stingy immigration policy, it is now by far the oldest country in the OECD. And senescence is spreading to new areas. Many rural Japanese villages have been old for years, because young people have left them for cities. Now the suburbs are greying, too.

Between 2010 and 2040 the number of people aged 65 or over in metropolitan Tokyo, of which Tama is part, is expected to rise from 2.7m to 4.1m, at which point one-third of Tokyo residents will be old. In Tama, ageing will be even swifter. The number of children has already dropped sharply: its city hall occupies a former school. Statisticians think the share of people over 65 in Tama will rise from 21% to 38% in the three decades to 2040. The number of over-75s will more than double.

The city’s inhabitants have already been spooked by an increasing number of confused old people wandering around. By 2025, officials in Tama predict, almost one in four elderly residents will be bedridden and one in seven will suffer from dementia. And the city is hardly ideal for old people. It is built on steep hills, and the five-storey apartment blocks where many of the residents live do not have lifts.

For Tama, though, the most worrying effects of ageing are fiscal. Two-thirds of the city’s budget goes on social welfare, which old people require lots of. They do not contribute much to the city’s coffers in return. Although Japan’s central government redistributes money between municipalities, much of what local governments spend comes from local residency taxes, which fall only lightly on pensioners. In short, says Shigeo Ito, the head of community health in Tama, it pays for a place to avoid growing too old.

Tama’s enticements

So, as well as providing more in-home care and laying on aerobics classes to keep people fit enough to climb all those stairs, Tama is once again trying to lure young families. With a developer, Brillia, it has already razed 23 five-storey apartment blocks and put up seven towers in their place. The number of flats in the redeveloped area has almost doubled, and many are larger than before. That has attracted new residents: although the poky 40-square-metre apartments in the old blocks were sufficient for the post-war generation, modern Japanese families demand more space. Tama’s authorities intend to transform other districts in a similar way.

This is smart policy, but there is a problem with it. The number of 20- to 29-year-olds in Japan has crashed from 18.3m to 12.8m since 2000, according to the World Bank. By 2040 there might be only 10.5m of them. Cities like Tama are therefore playing not a zero-sum game but a negative-sum game, frantically chasing an ever-diminishing number of young adults and children. And some of their rivals have extremely sharp elbows.

Follow the Tama river upstream, into the mountains, and you eventually reach a tiny town called Okutama. What Tama is trying to avoid has already happened there. Okutama’s population peaked in the 1950s, as construction workers flocked to the town to build a large reservoir that supplies water to Tokyo in emergencies. It has grown smaller and older ever since.

Today 47% of people in the Okutama administrative area—the town and surrounding villages—are 65 or older, and 26% are at least 75. Children have become so scarce that the large primary school is only about one-quarter full. Residents in their 70s outnumber children under ten by more than five to one (see chart).

And Okutama’s residents are as stubborn as they are long-lived. Some of its outlying villages have become so minuscule that providing them with services is difficult, says Hiroki Morita, head of the planning and finance department. It would be better for their residents, and certainly better for the local government, if they consolidated into larger villages. But old people refuse to leave their shrunken hamlets even during heavy snowstorms, and are unlikely to move permanently just to make a bureaucrat’s life easier. The internet and home delivery help them cling on, points out Mr Morita.

Okutama has tried to promote agriculture: wasabi, a spicy vegetable that is ground up and eaten with sushi, grows well there. It hopes to appeal to families by offering free vaccinations, free school lunches and free transport. None of that has staved off ageing and decline. So now it is touting free housing. Mr Morita estimates that the town has about 450 empty homes. He wants the owners to give their homes to the town government, which they might do in order to avoid property taxes. The government will then rent the homes to young couples, the more fecund the better. If they stay for 15 years their rent will be refunded.

Although its setting, amid steep hills, is spectacular, Okutama is not a pretty town. Its houses are neither old enough to be considered beautiful nor modern enough to be comfortable. Some feature post-war wheezes like plastic siding. Still, the prospect of free accommodation some two hours’ journey from central Tokyo might tempt some young families. And in the meantime, Okutama has another plan.

A building once occupied by a junior high school, which closed for lack of pupils, is becoming a language college. Jellyfish, an education firm with tentacles in several countries, will use it to teach Japanese to young graduates from East and South-East Asia. It hopes to enroll 120 students, plus staff, which ought to make a notable difference in a district where there are now fewer than 350 people in their 20s. Some of those students might even decide they like the place, and settle down. Whisper it, but this sounds a little like a more liberal immigration policy.

A German woman sued her bank after it refused to call her "Kundin" (female customer) rather than "Kunde" (male customer). But Germany's highest civil court has said the bank did not discriminate against her.

After his decision to quit the International Criminal Court, Philippine leader Duterte has called upon other nations to follow suit. The ICC announced last month it was launching a probe into Duterte's brutal drug war.

Shoplifting has become something of a lifeline for Japan’s elderly population.

As Bloomberg reports, nearly one in five women in prison is 65 or older. These elderly women commit minor crimes in order to escape poverty and solitude. Often, women are repeat offenders so that they can return to prison once they are released. To serve this group, the government is constructing prison wards specifically for elderly inmates and increasing nursing staff.

A 78-year-old inmate referred to as Ms. O has stolen energy drinks, coffee, tea, a rice ball, and a mango. She told Bloomberg: “Prison is an oasis for me—a place for relaxation and comfort. I don’t have freedom here, but I have nothing to worry about, either. There are many people to talk to. They provide us with nutritious meals three times a day.”

Mary Ellen O’Toole calls the teenagers who murdered 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999 by their first names — Dylan and Eric. O’Toole did not personally know Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, but she’s thought about them for decades. At the time of the Colorado shootings, O’Toole was a profiler for the FBI and had been tapped to write the bureau’s report on how to prevent mass shootings in schools. What began as a research project has become a life’s work — and a deep source of frustration.

O’Toole is part of a small group of academics, law-enforcement professionals and psychologists who published some of the first research on mass shootings in schools. She and other members of this group began paying attention to the phenomenon in the late 1990s. Two decades later, some of them say not much has changed. The risk factors they identified back then still apply. The recommendations they made are still valid. And, as we saw last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, students are still dying. “On the news, people are saying we should be concerned about this and that,” O’Toole said, “and I thought, ‘We identified that 20 years ago. Did you not read this stuff 20 years ago?’ … It’s fatiguing. I just feel a sense of fatigue.”

It’s difficult to say definitively how many school shootings have happened in the years since Columbine — or in the years before it. It’s harder still to prove how many would-be shootings were averted, or how many others could have been if additional steps had been taken. But the people who have spent the last two decades trying to understand this phenomenon are still here, and still trying to sell politicians and the public on possible solutions that are complicated, expensive and tough to sum up in a sound bite.

Any research into school shootings is made more difficult by how uncommon such shootings are. In 2016, FiveThirtyEight wrote about the more than 33,000 people killed by guns in America every year. Of those deaths, roughly one-third — about 12,000 — are homicides, but hardly any are due to mass shootings.1 If you define mass shootings as as an event where a lone attacker indiscriminately kills four or more people, in a public place, unrelated gang activity or robbery, then mass shootings account for a tiny portion of all gun homicides — probably a fraction of a percent.

A PROTEST in Madrid about the cost of the pope’s visit in 2011, when Spain’s economy was moribund, was not the first Flavia Totoro had attended. Marching alongside families, she was unconcerned about her safety. But after an altercation with police she and seven others were arrested. She was charged with assaulting an officer. Just before her trial she was offered the chance to plead guilty, in which case she could avoid a possible 18-month prison sentence and merely pay a fine. If all the defendants pleaded guilty, none would be imprisoned, the prosecutor said. But if she insisted on going to trial, the others would go, too. Unwilling to jeopardise other people’s freedom, she accepted, though she still maintains she was innocent and could have proved it in court.

In plea-bargaining, as the promise of a lesser penalty in return for a guilty plea is commonly known, prosecutors offer to drop some charges, to replace the original charge with a less serious one or to seek a lower sentence. It has long been central to America’s criminal-justice system. But over the past three decades it has spread across the world. A study of 90 countries by Fair Trials International, a campaigning group, found that in 1990 just 19 used some form of plea-bargaining. Now 66 do.

Plea-bargaining took off in America around 1920 with Prohibition, which led to a steep increase in the number of criminal offences. By 1930 the number of federal prosecutions under the Prohibition Act alone was eight times the total figure for all federal prosecutions in 1914. Bargaining with defendants to plead guilty in return for lighter punishment seemed like the only way to cope. Prohibition ended in 1933, but plea bargains did not. Since 1970, when the Supreme Court ruled that they were permissible, they have become ubiquitous. In 1980 some 19% of federal defendants went to trial. In 2010 the share was below 3%, where it remains.

Practice in other countries varies widely. In Australia, England and Russia more than 60% of cases are resolved with plea bargains. In Chile, India and Italy, the share is less than 10%. Some recent converts to plea bargains have adopted them with vim. In Georgia, which has allowed them since 2004, the share of convictions that involved a plea bargain rose from 13% in 2005 to 88% in 2012.

Export deals

The central role of plea-bargaining in America goes some way to explaining its spread elsewhere. America’s criminal-justice system has a big influence globally, with legal training often forming part of its foreign-aid efforts. The Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development Assistance and Training (OPDAT), part of the Department of Justice, was established in 1991, after the break-up of the Soviet Union and as the war on drugs in Latin America intensified. Among the countries where America helped new governments with legal reforms are Bolivia, Colombia, Poland and Russia. Plea-bargaining was often among the suggested reforms.

OPDAT is now helping to write guidance on criminal procedures, including plea-bargaining, in Croatia and the western Balkans. In Ukraine it trains justice officials in the system. Last year it started work with Guatemala on introducing plea-bargaining to clear a backlog of cases.

American influence, however, is not the only reason for plea bargains’ spread. Transitions to democracy often involve shifting from “inquisitorial” systems associated with discredited regimes, in which judges play an investigative role, says Rebecca Shaeffer of Fair Trials International. As countries adopted adversarial systems, in which judges act as referees between the prosecution and defence, they also sought to expand capacity—and introducing plea-bargaining enabled them to handle more cases.

More broadly, plea-bargaining can cut costs and delays. Without an incentive to plead guilty, even defendants facing overwhelming evidence may decide to take their chances in court. Finland brought in plea-bargains in 2015 after a series of cases in which the European Court of Human Rights ruled that it had violated citizens’ right to a timely trial.

A plea bargain can even offer an immediate route out of jail. Around the world almost 3m people are held in pre-trial detention. Many defendants spend longer in pre-trial detention than the maximum sentences they face. At that point, “of course they want to plead guilty to get out of prison,” says Isadora Fingermann, a Brazilian former criminal lawyer who now works in criminal-justice reform.

Another benefit of plea-bargaining is that it helps to tackle organised crime. A law passed in Brazil in 2013 allowing public prosecutors to slash sentences for defendants who made full confessions and provided detailed evidence against their accomplices was essential to Operation Lava Jato (Car Wash), an investigation into graft at the state-controlled oil firm, Petrobras. It has since cut a swathe through the country’s once-untouchable politicians, thanks to the evidence provided by bribe-paying businessmen desperate to stay out of jail.

The strong arm of the law

When America’s Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to plea bargains in 1970, it did so on the understanding that they would not be used to press innocent defendants falsely to admit guilt. But since then a series of miscarriages of justice and new psychological research suggest that, all too often, that is what happens.

In 2002 Brian Banks, a high-school football player, was accused of rape and kidnapping by an acquaintance. After his arrest, prosecutors offered him the chance to plead guilty and spend just a few years in jail, or to go to trial where he could face up to 41 years if convicted. He took the deal. After he was released, his alleged victim contacted him. They met and, in a conversation which he recorded, she admitted that she had invented the incident. In 2012 he was exonerated.

Mr Banks is not alone in pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit. Of the 149 Americans absolved of crimes in 2015, 65 had pleaded guilty. The Innocence Project, an organisation that uses DNA evidence to re-examine convictions, has proven the innocence of 300-odd people, most of them convicted for rape and murder. At least 30 had pleaded guilty. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, a collaboration between several law schools, a quarter of Americans cleared of murder between 1989 and 2012 had confessed. But such figures only hint at the scale of the problem. Often, plea bargains are conditional on giving up the right to challenge a conviction later. And exoneration efforts focus on serious crimes, where sentences are long and there is more likely to be forensic evidence.

Researchers are starting to demonstrate how common false confessions are likely to be. In a study in 2013 by Lucian Dervan of the Belmont University College of Law, together with Vanessa Edkins, a psychologist at the Florida Institute of Technology, students were asked to solve logic problems, first in a team and then alone. An accomplice of the researchers asked half the participants for help on the second set. All were then accused of cheating and offered a “plea bargain” to avoid penalties that could include losing the payment for participation and having their supervisors notified. Nearly 90% of those who had aided the accomplice confessed. But so did a majority of those who were innocent.

Mr Dervan is now running studies in Japan, which is introducing plea-bargaining, and South Korea, which may do so. Japan, where criminal suspects may be held for 23 days without charge, often with only minimal contact with a lawyer, perhaps deprived of sleep, is already worryingly good at extracting confessions. Plea bargains are being brought in as part of the horse-trading over a larger criminal-justice reform, in which prosecutors opposed to routine recording of interrogations have managed to limit it, in exchange for formal recognition of plea-bargaining and other aids to investigating complex crimes.

Early results suggest that the “innocence issue” is universal, says Mr Dervan. Differences in legal systems do not change the rate of false confessions much. Another study he is conducting suggests that guilty participants are no more likely to plead guilty if offered a big incentive rather than a small one. Innocent ones, however, become more likely to make false confessions as the incentive—in other words the penalty for rejecting the deal—rises.

The fear that plea bargains may induce false confessions means many countries have strict rules regarding their use. Japan will limit them to serious crimes where the accused informs on someone else. In Germany, South Africa and Spain defendants are shown all the evidence to be presented against them before they decide whether to accept a deal. In Germany, the discounted sentence cannot be less than the statutory minimum for that crime. In England, sentences can be cut by at most a third.

In America, by contrast, prosecutors have broad freedom to slash sentences, including for crimes that carry the death penalty. Extremely long sentences, mandatory-sentencing rules and untrammelled prosecutorial discretion add up to a system that almost seems designed for abuse.

And yet so entrenched are plea bargains in America that the occasional attempts to do without them have failed. Between 1975 and 1990 they were banned in Alaska. Even then, they happened informally. Judges made implicit deals with defendants who pleaded guilty. One study found that sentences after trials for violent crimes were, on average, 445% longer than those given after pleas. For fraud, they were 334% longer. The Texan city of El Paso banned plea-bargaining in 1975. During the following two years the trial rate doubled and the two judges assigned to criminal cases could not cope. Ten more were assigned to help them, but even so prosecutors started to strike secret bargains, with judges’ encouragement. The ban was eventually rescinded.

The extensive use of plea-bargaining can reshape an entire criminal-justice system. By definition, it means fewer trials—and therefore fewer occasions on which police and prosecutors must make a solid case in an open courtroom. The ability to carry out investigations can atrophy. And statutes that are vague or unjust may go unchallenged because so few cases go to trial.

For defendants who plead guilty, the consequences go beyond any (reduced) sentence they must serve or fine they must pay. In Europe criminal records are usually wiped clean of all but the most serious offences after some time, provided people do not re-offend. In the meantime, however, sensitive jobs such as teaching or public administration are likely to be off-limits. And minor transgressions, such as traffic offences, may be punished more harshly.

In many American states the consequences are more severe and long-lasting. Criminal records may never be expunged and may mean being barred from voting, evicted from public housing, denied welfare or turned away when applying for a job. The extra legal restrictions placed on people with criminal records, some bizarrely specific, mean they are more vulnerable to future charges. In Illinois, for example, it is a crime to own a dog that has not been spayed or neutered—but only for people with a criminal record.

Tilting the scales

All this suggests that defendants should carefully weigh the long-term consequences of a guilty plea. But it seems they do not—even when explicitly nudged to do so. In a separate study, Mr Dervan found that informing participants about those consequences made little difference to the likelihood that they would accept a deal. “If pleading guilty means you get to go home, most will plead guilty,” he says. When the justice system is stacked against defendants, they are unlikely to gamble their futures for its greater good.

ONE morning, an economist went to buy a shirt. The one he chose was a marvel of global production. It was made in Malaysia using German machines. The cloth was woven from Indian cotton grown from seeds developed in America. The collar lining came from Brazil; the artificial fibre from Portugal. Millions of shirts of every size and colour are sold every day, writes Paul Seabright, the shirt-buying economist, in his 2004 book, “The Company of Strangers”. No authority is in charge. The firms that make up the many links in the chain that supplied his shirt had merely obeyed market prices.

Throwing light on the magic of market co-ordination was a mainstay of the “classical” economics of the late-18th and 19th centuries. Then, in 1937, a paper published by Ronald Coase, a British economist, pointed out a glaring omission. The standard model of economics did not fit with what goes on within companies. When an employee switches from one division to another, for instance, he does not do so in response to higher wages, but because he is ordered to. The question posed by Coase was profound, if awkward for economics: why are some activities directed by market forces and others by firms?

His answer was that firms are a response to the high cost of using markets. It is often cheaper to direct tasks by fiat than to negotiate and enforce separate contracts for every transaction. Such “exchange costs” are low in markets for standardised goods, wrote Coase. A well-defined task can easily be put out to the market, where a contractor is paid a fixed sum for doing it. The firm comes into its own when simple contracts of this kind will not suffice. Instead, an employee agrees to follow varied and changing instructions, up to agreed limits, for a fixed salary.

Coase had first set out his theory while working as a lecturer in Dundee, in 1932, having spent the prior academic year in America, visiting factories and businesses. “The nature of the firm”, his paper, did not appear for another five years, in part because he was reluctant to rush into print. Though widely cited today, it went largely unread at first. But a second paper, “The problem of social cost”, published in 1960, by which time he had moved to America, brought him to prominence. It argued that private bargaining could resolve social problems, such as pollution, as long as property rights are well defined and transaction costs are low (they rarely are). He had been asked to expound his new theory earlier that year to a sceptical audience of University of Chicago economists. By the end of the evening, he had won everyone around. Coase was invited to join the university’s faculty in 1964; and there he remained until his death in 2013 at the age of 102.

In 1991 Coase was awarded the Nobel prize for economics, largely on the strength of these two papers. But as late as 1972, he lamented that “The nature of the firm” had been “much cited and little used”. In a strange way, Coase himself was partly to blame. The idea of transaction costs was such a good catch-all explanation for tricky subjects that it was used to close down further inquiry. In fact, Coase’s paper raised as many difficult questions as it answered. If firms exist to reduce transaction costs, why have market transactions at all? Why not further extend the firm’s boundaries? In short, what decides how the economy as a whole is organised?

Almost as soon as Coase had wished for it, a body of more rigorous research on such questions began to flourish. Central to it was the idea that it is difficult to specify all that is required of a business relationship, so some contracts are necessarily “incomplete”. Important figures in this field include Oliver Williamson, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2009, and Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom, who shared the prize in 2016. These and other Coase apostles drew on the work of legal theorists in distinguishing between spot transactions and business relations that require longer-term or flexible contracts.

Spot markets cover most transactions. Once money is exchanged for goods, the deal is completed. The transaction is simple: one party wants, another supplies. There is little scope for dispute, so a written contract can be dispensed with. If one party is unhappy, he will take his business elsewhere next time. Spot markets are thus largely self-policing. They are well suited to simple, low-value transactions, such as buying a newspaper or taking a taxi.

Things become trickier when the parties are locked into a deal that is costly to get out of. Take a property lease, for instance. A business that is evicted from its premises might not quickly find a building with similar features. Equally, if a tenant suddenly quit, the landlord might not find a replacement straight away. Each could threaten the other in a bid for a better rent. The answer is a long-term contract that specifies the rent, the tenure and use of the property. Both parties benefit.

But for many business arrangements, it is difficult to set down all that is required of each party in all circumstances. In such cases, formal contracts are by necessity “incomplete” and sustained largely by trust. An employment contract is of this type. It has a few formal terms: job title, work hours, initial pay and so on, but many of the most important duties and obligations are not written down. It is thus like a “mini-society with a vast array of norms beyond those centred on the exchange and its immediate processes”, wrote Mr Williamson. Such a contract stays in force mostly because its breakdown would hurt both parties. And because market forces are softened in such a contract, it calls for an alternative form of governance: the firm.

One of the first papers to elucidate these ideas was published in 1972 by Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz. They defined the firm as the central contractor in a team-production process. When output is the result of a team effort, it is hard to put the necessary tasks out to the market. That is because it is tricky to measure the contribution of each member to the finished work and to then allocate their rewards accordingly. So the firm is needed to act as both co-ordinator and monitor of a team.

Chain tale

If a team of workers requires a firm as monitor, might that also be true for teams of suppliers? In some cases, firms are indeed vertically integrated, meaning that suppliers of inputs and producers of final goods are under the same ownership. But in other cases, suppliers and their customers are separate entities. When is one set-up right and not the other?

A paper published in 1986 by Sanford Grossman and Mr Hart sharpened the thinking on this. They distinguished between two types of rights over a firm’s assets (its plant, machinery, brands, client lists and so on): specific rights, which can be contracted out, and residual rights, which come with ownership. Where it becomes costly for a company to specify all that it wants from a supplier, it might make sense to acquire it in order to claim the residual rights (and the profits) from ownership. But, as Messrs Grossman and Hart noted, something is also lost through the merger. The supplier’s incentive to innovate and to control costs vanishes, because he no longer owns the residual rights.

To illustrate this kind of relationship, they used the example of an insurance firm that pays a commission to an agent for selling policies. To encourage the agent to find high-quality clients, which are more likely to renew a policy, the firm defers some portion of the agent’s pay and ties it to the rate of policy renewals. The agent is thus induced to work hard to find good clients. But there is a drawback. The insurance firm now has an incentive of its own to shirk. While the agent is busting a gut to find the right sort of customers, the firm can take advantage by, say, cutting its spending on advertising its policies, raising their price or lowering their quality.

There is no set-up in which the incentives of firm and agent can be perfectly aligned. But Messrs Grossman and Hart identified a next-best solution: the party that brings the most to any venture in terms of “non-contractible” effort should own the key assets, which in this case is the client list. So the agent ought to own the list wherever policy renewals are sensitive to sales effort, as in the case of car insurance, for which people tend to shop around more. The agent would keep the residual rights and be rewarded for the effort to find the right sort of client. If the insurance firm shirks, the agent can simply sell the policies of a rival firm to his clients. But in cases where the firm brings more to the party than the sales agent—for example, when clients are “stickier” and the first sale is crucial, as with life insurance—a merger would make more sense.

This framework helps to address one of the questions raised by Coase’s original paper: when should a firm “make” and when should it “buy”? It can be applied to vertical business ties of all kinds. For instance, franchises have to abide by a few rules that can be set down in a contract, but get to keep the residual profits in exchange for a royalty fee paid to the parent firm. That is because the important efforts that the parent requires of a franchisee are not easy to put in a contract or to enforce.

The management of ties between a firm and its “stakeholders” (its customers, suppliers, employees and investors) is another variation on this theme. A firm often wants to put restraints on the parties it does business with. Luxury-goods firms or makers of fancy sound equipment may ban retailers from discounting their goods as a way to spur them to compete with rivals on the quality of their shops, service and advice.

Inside the cubicle

If one of the challenges set by Coase was to explain where the boundary between firms and markets lies, another was for economic analysis not to cease once it reached the factory gate or office lobby. A key issue is how agreements are structured. Why, for instance, do employment contracts have so few formal obligations? One insight from the literature is that a tightly specified contract can have perverse outcomes. If teachers are paid according to test results, they will “teach to the test” and pay less regard to other tasks, such as inspiring pupils to think independently. If chief executives are paid to boost the firm’s short-term share price, they will cut investment projects that may benefit shareholders in the long run.

Mr Holmstrom and Paul Milgrom established that where important tasks are hard to monitor, and where a balance of activities is needed, then a contract should shun strong incentives tied to any one task. The best approach is to pay a fixed salary and to leave the balance of tasks unspecified. A related idea developed by Mr Hart and John Moore is of a job contract as a “reference point” rather than as a detailed map. Another insight is that deferred forms of pay, such as company pension schemes and promotions based on seniority, help cement long-term ties with employees and reward them for investing in skills specific to the relationship.

Coase noted in 1937 that the degree to which the mechanism of price is superseded by the firm varies with the circumstances. Eighty years on, the boundary between the two might appear to be dissolving altogether. The share of self-employed contractors in the labour force has risen. The “gig economy” exemplified by Uber drivers is mushrooming.

Yet firms are unlikely to wither away. Prior to Uber, most taxi drivers were already self-employed. Spot-like job contracts are becoming more common, but flexibility comes at a cost. Workers have little incentive to invest in firm-specific skills, so productivity suffers. And even if Mr Seabright’s shirt was delivered by a set of market-based transactions, the supply chains for complex goods, such as an iPhone or an Airbus A380 superjumbo, rely on long-term contracts that are often “incomplete”. Coase was the first to spot an enduring truth. Successful economies need both the benign dictatorship of the firm and the invisible hand of the market.

Coase’s theory of the firm: a reading list1 “The Nature of the Firm” by R H Coase, Economica, 19372 “The Problem of Social Cost” by R H Coase, Journal of Law and Economics, 19603 “Industrial Organisation: A Proposal for Research” by R H Coase, NBER, 19724 “Production, Information Costs and Economic Organisation” by Armen A Alchian and Harold Demsetz, American Economic Review, 19725 “Transaction-Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractural Relations” by Oliver E Williamson, Journal of Law and Economics, 19796 “The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration” by Sanford Grossman and Oliver Hart, Journal of Political Economy, 19867 “Multitask Principal-Agent Analysis: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership and Job Design” by Bengt Holmstrom and Paul Milgrom, Journal of Law, Economics and Organisation, 19918 “The Firm as Sub-economy” by Bengt Holmstrom, Journal of Law Economics & Organisation, 19999 “The Theory of the the Firm as Governance Structure: From Choice to Contract” by Oliver E Williamson, 200210 “Contracts as Reference Points” by Oliver Hart and John Moore, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2008

Rob Duke's insight:

I use Coase quite a bit in my explanations for crime and organizational response to crime, so here's a great primer on the man's ideas.

Following completion of Women-Work-City, city officials turned their attention to Vienna’s network of public parks and commissioned a study to see how men and women use park space. What they found was surprising.

The study, which took place from 1996 to 1997, showed that after the age of nine, the number of girls in public parks dropped off dramatically, while the number of boys held steady. Researchers found that girls were less assertive than boys. If boys and girls would up in competition for park space, the boys were more likely to win out.

City planners wanted to see if they could reverse this trend by changing the parks themselves. In 1999, the city began a redesign of two parks in Vienna’s fifth district. Footpaths were added to make the parks more accessible and volleyball and badminton courts were installed to allow for a wider variety of activities. Landscaping was also used to subdivide large, open areas into semi-enclosed pockets of park space. Almost immediately, city officials noticed a change. Different groups of people -- girls and boys -- began to use the parks without any one group overrunning the other.

A city park in Vienna. (David Bohmann) People have started to pay attention. In 2008, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme included Vienna’s city planning strategy in its registry of best practices in improving the living environment. Vienna’s park redesign project, along with a program to create a gender mainstreaming pilot district, has even been nominated for the United Nations Public Service Award, a badge of honor recognizing efforts to improve public administration.

• • • • •

This change hasn’t come without criticism, however.

"When we came up with the idea for the exhibit “Who Owns Public Space" a lot of our colleagues thought it was ridiculous," Kail says. “Everyone we worked with had to give feedback. People said things like, "does this mean we should paint the streets pink?"

"Gender can be an emotional issue," Bauer adds. "When you tell people that up until now they haven’t taken the women’s perspective into account they feel attacked. We still have people asking, ‘Is this really necessary?'"

Planners also run the run the risk of reinforcing stereotypes in attempting to characterize how men and women use city space. To distance themselves from this, city officials have begun to shy away from the term gender mainstreaming, opting instead for the label 'Fair Shared City.'

Whatever its limitations, there's no question that mainstreaming has left an indelible mark on the Austrian capital. It began as a way to look at how men and women use city space differently. Today, however, mainstreaming has evolved into a much broader concept. It’s become a way of changing the structure and fabric of the city so that different groups of people can coexist. "For me, it’s a political approach to planning," Kail says. "It’s about bringing people into spaces where they didn’t exist before or felt they had no right to exist."

Rob Duke's insight:

Vienna gets it. Parks, streets, public spaces of all sorts are used freely by men--not so much by women. However, with better planning and management, we can easily level that field.

I found this article interesting and haven’t gave much thought to who utilizes city streets and park more between men or women. Now that I can reflect on my own observations with this article in mind I do realize that men populate the area way more than women. I think keeping that information in mind while designing new city features is awesome and would be curious on what ideas would increase the female population in parks. I cannot help but continue to feel that safety or the feeling of safety plays a huge role as to why women stop utilizing city parks.

This reminds me of when a particular campus was constructed. When one campus 'I don't remember the name' was first built, the Dean refused to have sidewalks put in. Instead, he let a year go by and he observed the trails that the student's naturally took, then, he put sidewalks in where the students were already walking.

William, that's not a bad way to do it. We now design "greens" that way. If you notice most "greens" or squares get used a great deal on the edges, but the center is largely unused. Now, we like to have little pods of user zones with benches and tables, maybe a clover leaf basket ball court (3 hoops all half court), and a little playground area. Often the center of the green is still available for pick up games of frisbee and soccer, but we may have a primary use as a stormwater retention basin.

Articles like this scare me. Being a woman in our society, I feel that we always have to watch around us and be cautious. My parents always told me growing up to watch my surroundings and be aware of who is around me at all times. This is always possible and I feel that those are the time that people like this man stike. It is a very scarey thing and I am happy he finally got caught. He should have to spend the rest of his life in in prison.

I'm curious on the outcome of this case, this man was liked by many in his community, but also committed a crime. Also the man is pleadeding he couldn't help himself, almost like he is claiming to have a sexual addiction. France does have rehab treatment centers for those struggling with addiction. French courts are broken into two categories, judicial courts and administrative courts. Judicial courts hear criminal and civil cases, therefore this case was under judicial courts system.

One in five prison beds in Germany are empty. The figures from German juvenile offenders' institutions are even more striking: the rate of youth crime fell by half between 2007 and 2015. This phenomenon is only partly linked to the fact that the population is ageing. German criminologists believe a ban on corporal punishment has had a positive effect on the country's youth.

Rob Duke's insight:

Hmm...no more spankings: that's the explanation. Seems a little bit of a facile explanation to me, but keep in mind that the Frankfurt School of Sociology is focused primarily on power (economic inequality) and symbolic nature of those relationships and interactions.

The Chicago (and Cornell) Schools would also emphasize economic, but in combination with social disorganization, learning theory, the symbolic interaction of these factors, that lead to the development of deviant subcultures.

The video does give more explanations to what contributed to this drop in crime. Youth unemployment being one of those factors. Overall, the written portion of the article does feel very selective. Nonetheless, that is a great situation to be in.

Germany is one of the model countries, maybe we can learn from them. There are a few reasons why there is a decline in juvenile crimes. First the population is aging, ban of corporal punishment (less violence in the home lead the a less violent youth). I think for that statement to be accurate more than just spanking was going on in the home. Crime in Germany is dropping in general. The video showed juvenile prisons that allow inmates 15 different trade options. That is something American prisons could use.

SATIVEX comes in a small brown glass vial. Each spray, delivered under the tongue or to the cheek, emits 100ml of a solution including alcohol, peppermint oil and a mixture of THC and CBD, the active ingredients in cannabis. GW Pharmaceuticals, its manufacturer, insists it is a “cannabis-based medicine”, not “medical marijuana”, since it is made to exacting pharmaceutical standards. It nevertheless contains extracts from Cannabis sativa, the cannabis flower and plant, and some users report a mild high. It can be prescribed by doctors, most often to sufferers from multiple sclerosis (MS).

Partly as a result, fuzzy fronds are flourishing in British greenhouses. In 2016 Britain harvested 95 tonnes of legally grown cannabis, twice as much as a year earlier, and more than any other country. The International Narcotics Control Board, an independent monitor linked to the UN, reckons that Britain is the world’s largest exporter of legal cannabis (in the form of medical products). And GW has another product, for treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy, under consideration by regulators in America and Europe.

But, unlike in some American states, those who use cannabis in its most basic leaf form to treat other illnesses run the risk of prosecution. Jon Liebling of the United Patients Alliance, a campaign group, recalls being busted a few years ago for growing a plant for him and his friends to treat illnesses, including anxiety and MS. “The government had taken my medicine,” he complains. Last October MPs joined activists smoking joints at a “cannabis tea party” outside Parliament to call for the legalisation of cannabis for medical use, which some define as having the right to grow their own.

Others hope for regulatory change, arguing that the road to market is too costly and unwieldy for a cheap herbal product. It requires approval by both the medicine authority and the Home Office. One policy adviser notes that GW Pharmaceuticals has an enormous first-mover advantage, having emerged from the process with a number of patents. Gavin Sathianathan of Forma Holdings, a firm that invests in medical-cannabis companies, says that Britain’s restrictive laws are hindering the growth of the next big biotech industry.

The lack of competition not only denies patients access to medicine, it also pushes up prices. Although Sativex is licensed for the treatment of MS, in 2014 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which advises the National Health Service, decided its benefits were not worth the cost (a different decision was reached in Wales, where the drug is still available on the NHS).

Cutting red tape may thus be a sensible move by the government. “If we’re going to fight the war on drugs,” says Mr Sathianathan, “we should at least get the sick off the battlefield first.”

AFTER the second world war, the leaders of the Western world tried to build institutions to prevent the horrors of the preceding decades from recurring. They sought to foster both prosperity and interdependence, to “make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible”. Their work has borne fruit. There has been no armed conflict in western Europe since. Expanded global trade has raised incomes around the world. Yet, as the Brexit vote demonstrates, globalisation now seems to be receding. Most economists have been blindsided by the backlash. A few saw it coming. It is worth studying their reasoning, in order to work out whether a retrenchment is inevitable or might be avoided.

Even economists realise that free trade can be a hard sell politically. The political economy of trade is treacherous: its benefits, though substantial, are diffuse, but its costs are often concentrated, giving those affected a strong incentive to push for protectionism. Since 1776, when Adam Smith published “The Wealth of Nations”, those pressing for global openness have won more battles than they have lost. Yet opposition to globalisation seldom disappears, and often regroups. And a position once considered near-heretical, that globalisation itself seems to create forces that erode political support for integration, is gaining currency.

Dani Rodrik of Harvard University is the author of the best-known such critique. In the late 1990s he pointed out that deeper economic integration required harmonisation of laws and regulations across countries. Differences in rules on employment contracts or product-safety requirements, for instance, act as barriers to trade. Indeed, trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership focus more on “non-tariff barriers” than they do on tariff reduction. But the consequences often run counter to popular preferences: the French might find themselves barred from supporting a French-language film industry, for example.

Deeper integration, Mr Rodrik reckoned, will therefore lead either to an erosion of democracy, as national leaders disregard the will of the public, or will cause the dissolution of the nation state, as authority moves to supranational bodies elected to create harmonised rules for everyone to follow. These trade-offs create a “trilemma”, in Mr Rodrik’s view: societies cannot be globally integrated, completely sovereign and democratic—they can opt for only two of the three. In the late 1990s Mr Rodrik speculated that the sovereignty of nation states would be the item societies chose to discard. Yet it now seems that economic integration may be more vulnerable.

Alberto Alesina of Harvard University and Enrico Spolaore of Tufts University presented a different but related view of the trade-offs entailed by global economic integration in “The Size of Nations”, published in 2003. They note that there are advantages to being a large country. Bigger countries can muster more resources for national defence, for instance. They also have large internal markets. But bigness also carries costs. The larger and more heterogeneous a country, the more difficult it is for the government to satisfy its citizens’ political preferences. There is less variation in political views in Scotland, to take one example, than across Britain as a whole. When policy is made by the British parliament (rather than in Edinburgh, Belfast and so on) the average Briton is slightly less satisfied with the result.

Global integration, Messrs Alesina and Spolaore argue, reduces the economic cost of breaking up big countries, since the smaller entities that result will not be cut off from bigger markets. Meanwhile the benefits of separatism, in terms of being able to cater better to the preferences of voters, are less diminished. So the global reduction in barriers to trade since the second world war, the pair contend, at least partly explains the simultaneous growth in the number of countries, even if national fractures often involve, or lead to, political instability and violence.

And then there is the question of how the benefits of globalisation are shared out. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prizewinner, has warned that rent-seeking companies’ influence over trade rules harms workers and erodes support for trade liberalisation. Raghuram Rajan, the head of India’s central bank, has argued that clumsy government efforts to compensate workers hurt by globalisation contributed to the global financial crisis, by facilitating excessive household borrowing, among other things. David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson have documented how the costs of America’s growing trade with China has fallen disproportionately on certain cities. And so on.

Open and shut

Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York believes such costs perpetuate a cycle of globalisation. He argues that periods of global integration and technological progress generate rising inequality, which inevitably triggers two countervailing forces, one beneficial and one harmful. On the one hand, governments tend to respond to rising inequality by increasing redistribution and investing in education; on the other, inequality leads to political upheaval and war. The first great era of globalisation, which ended in 1914, gave way to a long period of declining inequality, in which harmful countervailing forces played a bigger role than beneficial ones. History might repeat itself, he warns.

Such warnings do not amount to arguments against globalisation. As many of the economists in question are quick to note, the benefits of openness are massive. It is increasingly clear, however, that supporters of economic integration underestimated the risks both that big slices of society would feel left behind and that nationalism would continue to provide an alluring alternative. Either error alone might have undercut support for globalisation—and the six decades of relative peace and prosperity it has brought. In combination, they threaten to reverse it.

Rob Duke's insight:

Excerpt: "And then there is the question of how the benefits of globalisation are shared out. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prizewinner, has warned that rent-seeking companies’ influence over trade rules harms workers and erodes support for trade liberalisation. Raghuram Rajan, the head of India’s central bank, has argued that clumsy government efforts to compensate workers hurt by globalisation contributed to the global financial crisis, by facilitating excessive household borrowing, among other things. David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson have documented how the costs of America’s growing trade with China has fallen disproportionately on certain cities. And so on."

The Philippines has officially notified the UN secretary-general that it is quitting the ICC. The move comes after it was announced that the court was investigating killings connected with Manila's war on drugs.

Berlin police have carried out a series of raids, only this time against a member from its own ranks. A German officer is suspected of taking kickbacks from drug dealers in exchange for information on police operations.

Marielle Franco, 38, a rising star in the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), was killed along with her driver in northern Rio around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday night. Her press secretary survived the shooting on Rio's dangerous north side.

The killing comes just weeks after the federal government decreed that Brazil's army would take over all security operations through the end of the year in Rio, where murders have spiked in recent years. Franco had harshly criticized that move on Sunday, saying it could worsen police violence against residents.

"It is far too soon to say, but were are obviously looking at this as a murder in response to her political work, that is a main theory," said a Rio de Janeiro public prosecutor, who spoke on condition that he not be named as he was not authorized to discuss the case.

An investigator with Rio's police force also said that the prime motive appeared to be Franco's calling out police for allegedly killing innocents in their constant battles with drug gangs.

LOOK upwards in the magnificent place of worship in Istanbul now known as the Hagia Sophia Museum, and you will see two different ways of approaching the divine, reflecting different phases in the building's history. There are Christian mosaics, among the finest ever made, of Jesus Christ, his mother and other holy figures; and there is swirling Islamic calligraphy, which reflects the idea that God speaks to man through language, whether spoken or written, rather than through pictures or anything physical. For most of its history, Islam has had a deep aversion to the lifelike portrayal of animate beings, especially human beings, and above all to the representation of Muhammad, the messenger of God—or indeed any of the preceding prophets, such as Nuh (Noah) or Isa (Jesus). For an artist, trying to depict the Deity could be more impious only than drawing Muhammad. Why?

Such beliefs are rooted in Islam's horror of idolatry, and generally of anything that could come between man and God, or compromise the uniqueness and indivisibility of God. The Koran does not specifically condemn representative art, but it has a lot to say about paganism and idolatry; and Islam is correspondingly wary of anything that could become an idol or detract from the worship of God alone. The text most often cited in defence of the ban on representation is a hadith, one of the vast lore of sayings about the deeds and words of Muhammad. He is reported to have spoken harshly to a man who made his living through art. “Whoever makes a picture will be punished by Allah till he puts life in it, and he will never be able to do that.” This is taken to mean that for a human, to try “making” a new being is usurping God's role—and is in any case doomed to fail.

The belief is most strongly held by the Sunnis, who form the great majority of the world's Muslims, especially the more puritanical and zealous groups such as the Wahhabis, who dominate Saudi Arabia. Shia Islam is much more open to the depiction of human beings, up to and including Muhammad himself. This difference fuels the zeal of violent Sunni groups like Islamic State, who have destroyed Shia shrines and images, claiming in doing so to be purifying their religion of idolatrous accretions. By contrast the leading figure among the Shias of Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani, has said the depiction even of Muhammad is acceptable, as long as it is done with proper reverence.

To illustrate that the ban on depiction has not been absolute, it is often pointed out that the portrayal of human figures, including Muhammad, was a central feature of Persian miniatures, under both Sunni and Shia rulers. In more modern times, the theological ban on human depiction has been challenged in many Muslim countries by the ubiquity of human images in films, on television and in political propaganda posters. In Arab countries, ingenious compromises between depiction and non-depiction are sometimes found; on road signs, for example, a headless human figure will show pedestrians where to walk. At a slightly higher theological level, it is sometimes asserted (in the course of Christian—Muslim debates, for example) that Muhammad's aversion to images had exceptions. According to one version of his life, he went into the Ka'aba—the original place of worship in Mecca—and found it full of idols, which he destroyed. But there were two images which he allowed to remain, albeit hidden from public view: those of Jesus and Mary.

Dig deeper:As the threat of terrorism is increasing, the ability of Western security agencies to defeat it is declining (Jan 2015)Could Voltaire be Muslim? (Jan 2015)The pleasures and perils of name calling (Jan 2015)

QUARTER-LITRE bottles of whisky whizz down a conveyor belt past Mukhtar Ali, a quality-control employee at Pakistan’s Murree Brewery, the only legal beer-and-spirit maker in this Islamic country. Nearby labourers pack Vat No.1, a cask-aged spirit, into boxes. An elderly man with a long beard tapes them up. Asked over the roar of imported German machinery if they have ever taken a sip of the amber liquid, each shakes his head. “It’s haram,” (meaning forbidden), says Mr Ali.

The 155-year-old institution causes some spluttering nonetheless. Founded for British troops of the Raj, it can sell only to the 3% of the 207m-strong population that is comprised of foreigners and non-Muslims. But many of its products end up in Muslim hands, as illustrated by the predilections of the former prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who ordered a nationwide ban on alcohol in 1977. “He was the biggest consumer of Murree in history!” says the company’s boss, Isphanyar Bhandara. Some employees do sneak drinks on the job, he adds.

Shareholders can toast a vintage few years for the firm, whose market capitalisation of $160m makes it one of the largest food and beverage firms listed on Pakistan’s stockmarket. In 2016, it doubled its alcohol-production capacity. Profits have risen by almost 100% since 2012, reaching a foamy $19.6m last year.

One reason is an influx of thirsty Chinese citizens, who clamour for alcohol as they deepen their country’s footprint in Pakistan. An increasingly relaxed officialdom also helps. Government employees work inside Murree’s fortress-like walls and hold the keys to locks on every vat of whisky. Yet in recent years provincial administrations have granted more permits to individuals and upmarket hotels to indulge. Elite Pakistanis, able to afford prices of around $3 for a can of lager, are a reliable source of demand.

It also helps that in 2009 the main sharia court ruled that the official punishment for drinking—80 lashes—was itself un-Islamic; the verdict had never been imposed. Yet Murree’s product remains a touchy subject. In 2016 the Sindh High Court temporarily banned all sales of alcohol in the southern province, a significant blow to profits as it accounts for 60% of Murree’s liquor sales. The case still hangs over the company.

To guard against such headaches in future, Murree is expanding its range of soft drinks, including Murree Sparkletts, a mineral water. Freer liquor markets abroad also appeal. Attempts to brew Murree in neighbouring India (Pakistan’s law forbids exporting it outright) have foundered, the result of sour diplomatic relations. Yet the firm soon hopes to offer British citizens the chance, once again, to “have a Murree with your curry”. A worldwide distribution deal is being negotiated through a Czech brewery that produces its beer. “The Brits started it here, so why not?” says a tweed-jacketed executive, Sabih Ur Rehman, puffing on a Silk Cut cigarette.

POLICE in the United States kill roughly 1,000 people a year. No other rich country comes close. Finnish police fired only six bullets in 2013, fewer than half the number that one Chicago cop put into Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, in 2014 as he was walking away.

Next to police in some poorer countries, though, America’s cops look almost Nordic. Police in El Salvador are 22 times deadlier. Cops in Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian state with just 17m inhabitants, killed more people in 2017 than all of America’s police. (In February Brazil’s president ordered the army to take over policing Rio.) In countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and the Philippines it is impossible to say even roughly how many people the police kill, but it is a lot. “Police brutality is as common as water,” says Justus Ijeoma, a human-rights activist in Nigeria’s Anambra state.

Why are some cops so likely to kill? Partly because they fear for their own lives, or for those of bystanders. In general, the more murderous the country, the more deadly are its police (see chart). American cops shoot more people than police in other rich countries largely because more people shoot at them. They are 36 times deadlier than German police officers, but also 35 times likelier to be killed on the job.

The other big difference is incentives. In America, as in Europe, a cop who kills unlawfully can expect to be punished. (The officer who shot McDonald was suspended and has been charged with murder; he has pleaded not guilty.) In many developing countries, by contrast, the authorities encourage extrajudicial executions, either to get rid of dissidents or to suppress crime. Voters often applaud them for it.

In the Philippines, for example, President Rodrigo Duterte openly urges the police to kill suspected drug dealers and even drug users, to fulfil a campaign promise to dump their corpses in Manila Bay and “fatten all the fish there”. Since he became president in May 2016 more than 12,000 people have died in extrajudicial killings, according to human-rights groups. The police give a smaller but still staggering number. They say that 3,850 died in anti-drug operations between July 2016 and September 2017. Another 2,290 drug-related murders are “under investigation”.

Imelda Hidalgo, who lives in a slum of Quezon City, in Manila, says the police gunned down her brother last year, probably because they heard that he took shabu (methamphetamine). Trigger-happy cops sometimes shoot bystanders. “We are scared,” says Ms Hidalgo, “What if a user comes to our local store and then there’s a drug operation right here?”

Elizabeth Mago, a food-seller in Quezon City, says her son “just had a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time”. One evening last year, he asked for 10 pesos ($0.20) to pay for a video-gaming session and headed for the local computer shop. While there he was shot. His mother suspects the police were involved, but cannot be sure. Such confusion is normal. “On operations the first thing the police do is take out the CCTV cameras and the lights,” says a church volunteer who helps those bereaved by violence.

The government insists that killing criminals cuts crime. This is impossible to verify. What is certain, however, is that many of the killings are murder, pure and simple, and that having a licence to kill makes it easier for corrupt police to intimidate civilians. “Extortion now is more rampant somehow, because the police can choose who to kill and who to put in jail,” says a local official.

Still, more than three-quarters of Filipinos approve of the government’s approach. Even those harmed by the brutal campaign sometimes favour it. Both Ms Hidalgo and Ms Mago want it to continue.

A similar drug war in Thailand, which began in 2003, was a fiasco. A public report four years later found that in its initial months about half of the 2,819 extrajudicial killings involved victims who had nothing to do with drugs. Villagers sometimes grumble that addiction is as bad as ever. Yet many long for a return to violence. “If you kill a dog, do you have to apologise to his family?” asks a rice farmer. “No. And it’s the same with drug dealers.”

In 2015 the vice-president of El Salvador told police that they could shoot gang members “without any fear of suffering consequences”. Such “implicit impunity” spurs police over-zealousness, observes Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. After the government announced a mano dura (iron-fist) policy, the number of alleged gang members shot by police and soldiers rose 15-fold, from 39 in 2013 to 603 in 2016. Over the same period, the murder rate doubled. Police are supposed to shoot to wound, but the ratio of suspects killed to wounded jumped from 3.1 in 2015 to 6.3 in the first six months of 2017. The ratio of dead suspects to dead police rose almost eight times, from 15 to one in 2014 to 113 to one in June 2017.

Last year more than 600 Salvadorean officers were arrested for allegedly belonging to death squads, participating in shoot-outs or committing other crimes. Hardly any were prosecuted or even sacked. At one point journalists got access to an elite unit’s WhatsApp chat group where officers shared videos of suspects being tortured, celebrated the “elimination” of gangster “rats” and traded tips on how to plant evidence. The officers in the WhatsApp chat were arrested, but freed three days later.

One-directional shoot-outs

Advocates of mano dura policing in Latin America say it is the only way to deal with drug gangs. In other countries the excuse is terrorism. Consider the case of Naqeebullah Mehsud, a 27-year-old aspiring male model in Pakistan. Before his death he posted a video online in which he and a friend dance in a woodland clearing. He smiles, claps and sways. His long hair flicks in the breeze. He does not look like a member of the Taliban, an Islamist movement that abhors music and hairstyles. Yet on January 13th a police team killed Mehsud in what they termed an “encounter” with four terrorists.

“Encounter killings” are common in Pakistan and India. Between 1997 and 2016 some 8,800 cases were tallied in Pakistan. The term implies that suspects perish in shoot-outs. Police seldom die during these battles, however. In the house where Mehsud died, blood colours the floor but bullet-holes pock only one wall.

Mehsud had gone missing ten days before his death. Some people told local media that police had picked him up in an attempt at extortion. A police investigation found no links between him and the Taliban. The encounter, it found, was probably “staged”. Mehsud’s fellow Pushtuns, who say the police have been harrying them for years, held protest marches.

The unit that killed Mehsud has reportedly carried out 262 encounter killings since 2009. Its leader, Rao Anwar, has become a celebrity. Journalists with cameras routinely arrive at the scene of a shoot-out minutes before it begins, says Afzal Nadeem Dogar, of Geo News, a local channel. “It’s like Anwar’s a movie hero,” scoffs Jibran Nasir, a lawyer and campaigner. “Bombs go off all around but he emerges scratchless every time.”

Mr Anwar’s career may now be over. He has gone into hiding to escape an arrest warrant for murder. Yet attempts to root out extrajudicial killing run up against a phalanx of incentives supporting it. Pakistan’s courts are drowning under a backlog of 1.9m cases. Judges fear to try terrorism cases, lest they be murdered by jihadists. Witnesses seldom come forward. Police are tempted to take shortcuts. Worst, officers who rack up “encounters” can expect professional advancement. “I worked hard all my life,” sighs a senior officer, “but I was not part of any encounters, so I was unable to get a promotion.”

One globally popular idea to curb killings is for police to wear cameras. Yet a study in Washington, DC, in which roughly half the cops were given body cameras and half were not, showed no difference in the use of force between the two groups. This might not mean that body cameras are useless. It may be that American police generally follow the rules, and so did not need to change their behaviour when being filmed. Other police forces might be different; and body cameras might make civilians behave better, too.

Technology can restrain cops only if the authorities want to restrain them—someone has to watch the body-camera footage and punish misconduct. Building a culture of accountability takes time and political will, but is not impossible. In the early 2000s Colombia purged 12,000 corrupt officers and taught new ones to be better detectives. In Guatemala a UN-backed team of independent prosecutors secured convictions in 2013 against four cops responsible for systematic killings of prisoners. Such high-profile cases drove down police killings and homicides in general.

In the short term, police need better training in the use of non-lethal means of incapacitating suspects, such as tasers. Franklin Zimring of the University of California, Berkeley, argues that many American lives could be saved if the police reassessed tactics such as emptying a 15-bullet magazine into a knife-wielding civilian standing 20 feet away “just to make sure”.

In the long run, cops in many poor countries need better pay (so they are not tempted to moonlight as assassins), tougher consequences for abusing their powers and a functioning legal system to work with, so they do not face a choice between killing a suspect and seeing him bribe his way out of prison. Most of all, such countries need leaders who think that civilian lives matter, and that punishments are for courts, not cops, to decide.

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Why they do it"

Rob Duke's insight:

In some countries, killer cops are celebrated Even though they are ineffective

Interesting article, found a few interesting points. First it is disappointing that American police shoots over 1,000 people a year. The excuse for that number is people shoot back. These last few years cops have shot many unarmed children and adults, therefore the article forgot to mention that some cops kill for enjoyment and are not suited for the job. I do agree that cops kill in fear of their lives and bystanders, it is their job and right to use force necessary to protect themselves and others. I also feel in certain countries if police don't kill they will be killed themselves. I can't imagine all Germans believed in Hitler, they probably feared for their lives. The United States is not the most dangerous country, El Savador , Rio De Janerio, Nigeria, and the Philippines are more dangerous than the US and they don't have a count of how many deaths by cops because it is to high.

DURING Friday prayers the congregation of Muhammad Yousef, a young puritanical preacher in the Egyptian town of Mansoura, once spilled out into the alleys surrounding his mosque. Now Sheikh Muhammad counts it a good week if he fills half the place.

In Cairo, 110km (68 miles) to the south, unveiled women sit in street cafés, traditionally a male preserve, smoking water-pipes. Some of the establishments serve alcohol, which Islam prohibits. “We’re in religious decline,” moans Sheikh Muhammad, whose despair is shared by clerics in many parts of the Arab world.

According to Arab Barometer, a pollster, much of the region is growing less religious. Voters who backed Islamists after the upheaval of the Arab spring in 2011 have grown disillusioned with their performance and changed their minds. In Egypt support for imposing sharia (Islamic law) fell from 84% in 2011 to 34% in 2016. Egyptians are praying less, too (see chart). In places such as Lebanon and Morocco only half as many Muslims listen to recitals of the Koran today, compared with 2011. Gender equality in education and the workplace, long hindered by Muslim tradition, is widely accepted. “Society is driving change,” says Michael Robbins, an American who heads Barometer.

But so, too, is a new crop of Arab leaders, who have adjusted their policies in line with the zeitgeist. They are acting, in part, out of political self-interest. The region’s authoritarians, who once tried to co-opt Islamists, now view them as the biggest threat to their rule. By curbing the influence of clerics they are also weakening checks on their own power. Still, many Arab leaders seem genuinely interested in moulding more secular and tolerant societies, even if their reforms do not extend to the political sphere.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has led the way in relaxing religious and social restrictions. While leading a regional campaign against Islamist movements, Muhammad bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s de facto leader, has financed the construction of Western university branches and art galleries. He has encouraged young women out of domestic seclusion and into military service, his daughter included. Female soldiers often walk the streets in uniform. In marked contrast to the region’s post-independence nationalist leaders, who purged their societies of Armenians, Greeks, Italians and Jews, he has embraced diversity, though tough restrictions on citizenship persist.

In Egypt President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has not only banned the Muslim Brotherhood, the region’s pre-eminent Islamist movement, but denounced al-Azhar, the Muslim world’s oldest seat of learning, for “intolerance”. He has closed thousands of mosques and said that Muslims must not sacrifice sheep in their homes during festivals without a licence. On some beaches burkinis—body-covering swimwear for conservative women—are banned. In a break from his predecessors, Mr Sisi has attended Christmas mass in Cairo’s Coptic cathedral three years in a row (though he doesn’t stay long). “We’re becoming more European,” explains an Egyptian official.

The most remarkable, albeit nascent, transformation is in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, where Muhammad bin Salman, the young crown prince, has curbed the religious police, sacked thousands of imams and launched a new Centre for Moderation to censor “fake and extremist texts”. Women will soon be allowed to drive cars and enter sports stadiums. They are already encouraged to work. Now Prince Muhammad wants to create a new city, Neom, that seems modelled on freewheeling Dubai. Its promotional videos show women without headscarves partying with men. “We are only returning to what we used to be, to moderate Islam, open to the world and all religions,” he told foreign investors in October.

This move to moderation is far from ubiquitous. In countries with less dynamic governments, such as Algeria, Jordan and Palestine, polls show that support for sharia and sympathy for Islamist movements is high and growing. But secularists can been found in even the most conservative quarters. Freed from the grip of Islamic State (IS) jihadists, residents of Mosul, in Iraq, congregate in revamped cafés that have sprouted around the city’s wrecked university. Many profess to be atheists. The fine-arts department is reopening after it was closed by IS three years ago, with twice its previous intake of students.

Economic hardship, long seen as fuelling Islamist opposition movements, may also be eroding traditional views on women’s role in society. Amid soaring inflation and subsidy cuts in many countries, one salary is rarely enough to support a family. So husbands encourage their wives to work. Daughters are leaving their homes in rural areas to study or work in cities. Health workers say premarital sex is more common, in part because the age of marriage is rising (many blame high living costs).

Moderation without representation

All of the change is bittersweet for the region’s liberals, who want more political openness, too. But Arab leaders are acting much like Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s dictator in the early 20th century, who abolished the caliphate and sharia, and banned traditional garb, all while consolidating his own power.

In implementing his modernising agenda, Prince Muhammad has downgraded his family’s 250-year-old alliance with the Wahhabist clergy, who enforced a puritanical version of Islam and seemed to rule Saudi Arabia alongside the House of Saud. Now clerics who push back too hard against decrees are muzzled—or arrested. Dozens of public figures (including liberals) who were critical of the prince’s policies were detained in September.

Similarly, Mr Sisi fans criticism of religious movements, while censoring even indirect barbs of his rule. He has banned hundreds of newspapers and websites, and muzzled artists and musicians who might provoke opposition.

Yet many Arabs seem ready to forfeit political rights in exchange for personal liberties. A poll this year named the UAE as the state Arabs most want to live in, despite its dearth of democratic rights. But secularisation may last only as long as the despots pushing the plan. And even they may not go as far as activists want. No sooner had Saudi women won the right to drive than some took their bicycles out on the roads, testing the limits of official tolerance.

I enjoyed reading this article and feel that it was refreshing to read how the prince of Abu Dhabi is encouraging women; including his own daughter out of domestic seclusion and into the military. There seems to be more positive changes that we do not hear about in the news. I feel a lot of news focus on terrorist groups and does not actually reflect the middle eastern countries and the changes they are making for their people.

I to thought this article had showed good positive movements in these countries. However, as the article also pointed out all these progressive movements can be destroyed if a more clerical ruler was to come in. In countries such as these that have long been ruled by idealogical leaders, I don't think one more progressive can sustain the change it will take multiple before it is fully accepted.

HALF a dozen young technology workers are gathered around a table in south Mumbai. In between checking their smartphones, they describe an Indian social revolution of which they are in the vanguard. Marriage, one woman explains, is becoming freer and easier—“less stiff-necked”, as she puts it. All have far more choice when it comes to picking a marriage partner than their parents knew: two of the women have even married men from another religion. The old-fashioned marriages that they see on television and in films seem deeply peculiar. “It’s a different world,” one says.

Marriage is a central institution in all societies. In India it often seems more important than anything else. Witness the extravagant, days-long weddings, the lavish gifts of saris and jewellery, and the columns of spouse-wanted ads in newspapers—or just watch any Bollywood romantic comedy. Yet marriage in India is also changing, in ways that are liberating and exciting but also often confusing.

Nearly all Indian women marry by their late 20s, and births out of wedlock are vanishingly rare. Marriages are almost always arranged. Dowry payments are widespread. About 90-95% of the time Hindus marry within their broad caste group. But if the basic rules of the game are fixed, the style of play is different these days.

Gourav Rakshit, the chief executive of a popular website for seeking marriage partners, Shaadi.com, spies a subtle but momentous change. It used to be that parents and older siblings drove the matchmaking process, he says, lining up potential partners whom the spouse-to-be might veto. These days the offspring tend to be in charge of finding their own partners, but parents may veto them. “What has not changed is that marriage is a family decision,” he explains. “What has changed is who is driving the process.”

Fully 73% of the profiles on Shaadi.com have been put there by people who are seeking partners for themselves, not by their parents or brothers. These days most new users (about 12,000 to 15,000 people sign up each day) access the website via smartphones. Those phones, which are bringing the internet to millions of new users, are themselves changing the matchmaking process. Tech-savvy Indians can now find out all about potential partners by tracking their digital traces through social media, or just by texting and telephoning. Parents need never know.

If small numbers of highly educated urbanites were becoming more individualistic, it would be little more than an interesting wrinkle in Indian life. However, the change is much more widespread than that. To begin with, this group is no longer small. Fully a quarter of young Indians were in tertiary education in 2013, according to the World Bank, up from 11% a decade earlier. Education and control over marriage go together (see chart).

And it is not just the wealthy who see marriage differently. The teenagers who live in Dharavi, a long-established slum between two railway lines in Mumbai, feel themselves to be just as culturally distinct from rural Indians as the technology workers do. Young men from Dharavi sometimes marry village women, who come to live with them. Asked about this, one teenage slum girl launches into a wicked impersonation of a rural bride, all namastes and scraping deference to her husband. (A Muslim boy is more equivocal: Mumbai girls know how to handle technology, he says, but rural girls know how to handle mothers-in-law.)

Although caste is still powerful in Dharavi, it is gradually giving way to the money god. Teenage boys insist that good jobs—government jobs especially—are now more important, both for snagging good partners and for asserting control over marriage decisions. One of the boys, an orphan, has a girlfriend and wants to marry her. Her parents object to his caste, but he reckons he can wear down their objections by finishing his education and getting a better job.

Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist at Shiv Nadar University, says that caste is crumbling as India urbanises. Nearly a third of Indians now live in cities or towns, while villages are tied increasingly to urban economies. The village bosses who enforce caste rules have less power than they did. Some north Indian village elders have chosen to relax the rules anyway, because so many single men are in search of wives—a consequence of sex-selective abortions. Caste is now less an institution than a mess of prejudices about the superiority of one’s own group.

Popular culture is driving change too. In parts of Dharavi the greatest hazard for a pedestrian is not the open sewer beneath your feet but the tangle of wires around your head. Many of these wires carry cable-television signals. They transmit soap operas and movies which often depict the struggle between love and tradition. Though these seem stuffy to the upper middle classes, they can be a revelation to the poor. Nayreen Daruwalla of SNEHA, a Mumbai charity, has heard women complain that their husbands do not sing to them, as men do in Bollywood films.

One big thing stands in the way of further change, says Sonal Desai, another academic. Indian parents still assume they will live with their sons. That explains why they exert so much control over marriage: they are in effect choosing a cook and a future carer. Yet this too is beginning to weaken. Ms Desai led a team from the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland which conducted a huge survey of Indians in 2011-12 and found that 77% of women over 60 lived with their married children—still a big proportion, but lower than the 83% who did so in 2004-05. Small houses and high-rise flats are shooting up in Indian suburbs, suggesting the share is going to fall further.

Indian marriage still looks very different from the Western kind (which is changing too). Yet prosperity and technology are eroding tradition. People Group, which owns Shaadi.com, even invested in a dating app earlier this year. Such apps, which were unimaginable in India until recently, have not taken off yet. “The guys are all keen,” says Mr Rakshit, “but the girls aren’t there yet.”

This is hopefully a good step in the marriage culture and sexually frustrated system that has been a problem in this country. Hopefully with this more direct approach to spouse hunting with the individuals taking the lead and the parents simply having a veto vote, we will see less honor and dowry killings. Also, hopefully less rapes and sexual assault.

The best tool to fight crime may be a lawnmower. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which shows that sprucing up vacant lots by doing as little as picking up trash and cutting the grass curbed gun violence in poor neighborhoods in a major U.S. metropolis by nearly 30%.

“This is a really innovative study,” says Jim Sallis, a psychologist and behavioral medicine researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved with the work. It’s “a clear and convincing demonstration” that simple improvements to vacant lots help make urban neighborhoods safer, he says.

Vacant lots are abandoned property plots that often become overgrown with grass and shrubs and littered with trash and debris from illegal dumping. Across the United States, they make up about 15% of land in cities—an area about the size of Switzerland. But generally, each individual plot is no bigger than a tenth the size of a U.S. football field. Criminals exploit these neglected fields to sell and use drugs and as escape routes during police raids.

Rob Duke's insight:

Sounds like Broken Windows theory except that we don't like to talk about Wilson & Kelling's theory since NYPD used it to support Zero-Tolerance Policing. Having said that, it still seems to be true that places that look to be cared for are still the safest places.

I don't know how cleaning up some land would lead to a decrease in crime unless maybe there's less places to hide and that sort of thing. I do think however that it is a really nice gesture cleaning up neighborhoods and lands that are dirty. I think criminals probably believe that if the area is clean and not ridden with trash and such than maybe they will keep their distance from those areas. As I said though I think it is a nice gesture if nothing else.

I lived in Detroit, Michigan and saw this types of community actions in person. I worked out of an Army recruiting station in Livonia and would travel daily to various neighborhoods and school districts. There definitely was a stronger community feeling in the neighborhoods that were active in these types of activities. It could be seen in talking to the parents, kids, and community members there was a much stronger feeling of pride, community, and thus safety in these areas.

This is also classic Chicago School where we find a 3 way intersection with socially disorganized communities, economic strain, leading to both a deviant subculture and an underground economy that drives crime. Later Chicago School (e.g. Sudhir Venkatesh drops that theory in reverse and says under-investment in a community drives them to create an underground economy). Again, sounds like Coase Theorem where markets find efficient ways to operate no matter what institutional arrangements are set. The critique here is whether this is the ethical arrangement? Markets are good at efficiency (handwaving here...even Coase suggested that the reason firms arise is because transaction costs are too high with the chaos of a market), but terrible at morality.

The "Dark Web" is a part of the internet that can only be accessed with a special browser. One of its main features is a huge quantity of illegal marketplaces selling drugs, weapons, stolen bank cards, fake IDs and more. But hidden among the criminals and buyers are French units of specialised police forces, who are hunting down cybercriminals. This report takes a closer look.

This is crazy. I knew the dark web existed, but I never knew so much stuff was sold on there. I also didn't know that stores could steal your card information like that. It makes me want to be more cautious now because this made me realize just how easy it is for people to get your information and use it.

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